


Night will fall

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the afternoon of the second day in the Quarter Quell arena, inexplicable things begin to occur and normal events go off track. Note: This is an old idea that I’ve been planning to write for a long time — <em>what if there was no rescue from that arena?</em> — and although the story’s still in progress, I thought I might motivate myself by posting the draft opening scenes now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night will fall

Night will fall in the arena — but not yet, and we don’t want to get too close on the heels of the Gamemakers’ devices as they come to life around the face of the clock. We wait on the beach below the jabberjay section only until the pink sky begins to deepen and Finnick has netted enough fish for a decent supper. Then we begin our trek around the circle toward the wave section, taking our time, especially because Beetee clearly finds it painful to walk. Twilight will help obscure us, if Brutus and Enobaria are thinking of making another attack. And if they wait until night, till moonlight or the illumination from the seal and the faces of the dead, well, that helps us just as much as it does them.

Finnick has the lead, supporting Beetee. They’re talking about bread — Finnick is going on about the bread we got this morning, about its unblemished crust and how well it went with the shellfish. Beetee comments from time to time about how much he prefers the small rolls from his own district.

I glance over at Peeta to find he’s eavesdropping closely. I really had no idea bread was such a common obsession among men. Did my father talk about bread?

Off to our right, over the water, a gleam streaks through the darkening sky. The metallic fabric of a parachute. It plops into the water.

Johanna looks past us. “You gonna get that?”

Finnick shrugs and hands Beetee off to Peeta. The parachute slowly sinks as he swims out to it, but he dips under easily to retrieve it. As he splashes to the sand, he comments to Beetee, “Would be nice if it was some dinner rolls.” We all crowd around as he opens the container.

It isn’t bread, that’s for sure. It’s filled with what looks to me like tightly packed glass ribbons, red-and-white things in perfect waves that look like something Effie or Octavia would have on a dress. The smell of peppermint rises up from the container.

“Not what I would expect,” Beetee mutters.

Johanna looks around, scowling. “Anybody hungry?”

Peeta reaches in and pulls out a piece. “This is way fancier than the peppermint candy we make in Twelve.” He turns the waves this way and that.

Peppermint candy. I haven’t had any since …

Who sent this to us?

I think I’ve seen Careers get candy. Years when the Cornucopia is full of food, maybe. When Careers have the upper hand and they’ve got no cares in the world other than how elaborately they can kiss up to their sponsors and kill their competition.

“Finnick,” I say. “Take some. How’d you put it? We all better grab something sweet while we can.”

He looks up at me blankly, and I have a split second of the same sinking feeling I did earlier when Johanna acted like she didn’t know what Beetee could do with wire. Then his face rearranges itself into a blinding smile. “Dessert before dinner? Exciting. Let’s all ruin our figures.”

He offers the container around. As I select my own piece of exquisitely shaped and dyed sugar, I say, “Peeta, I haven’t had peppermints in so long. You remember when I brought some home this winter. You and Haymitch were playing chess.”

He smiles. “And you were so mad because Prim and I ate the whole bag of candy. Yeah.” But he looks at me steadily, and I know he understands what I’m trying to make him remember. Pretending everything was fine while communicating only to each other that we were in danger.

We don’t need candy for anything. So assuming Haymitch had a hand in sending it …

And if he didn’t choose it for us? If the mentor for Four, or Finnick’s sponsors, are telling him to play this like a Career instead of sticking to an alliance of mid-grade and outlying districts?

We all crunch our candy as if we’re enjoying it, and then Johanna knots the container in its parachute onto her belt the same way I’m carrying the spile, and we trudge on along the beach. The last traces of pink disappear from the dark sky. Finnick and Beetee keep chatting, but now I can’t quite hear them. When I look over my shoulder, Johanna is glaring around at the horizon, keeping an eye out.

The wave rumbles and crests over the jungle, about ninety degrees away from us. Good, we’ve kept well behind the active wedges. I watch the wave roll out across the water. No screaming this time — I guess it didn’t catch anybody unawares, even in the dark. The anthem tonight will tell us who it was that died in the wave this morning.

Except, if it’s now ten o'clock, didn’t we miss the anthem?

Nobody mentions it. The back of my neck prickles. I drop back to walk with Johanna, who ignores me. Peeta takes a turn supporting Beetee. We come to the wet sand of the ten o'clock section and wait for it to drain a little more thoroughly before settling down to camp for the night.

Johanna, Finnick, and Beetee are all on edge. More than seems reasonable. They jump when the clicking like a chorus of evil insects starts up in the eleven-to-twelve o'clock wedge. I try replacing the moss over Beetee’s wound to make him more comfortable.

“Beetee, you were talking about rolls from your district earlier,” Peeta says conversationally, maybe aiming to help me out. “Those are the little square ones, right?”

Behind his glasses, Beetee’s eyes dart to the other two. His voice is faint. “Yes. You can lay them out very neatly in a baking pan, is why. For dividing among different numbers of family members. Twelve in a pan are common. I like twenty-four best.”

Peeta starts to say something about making pull-apart rolls, but Johanna says over him, “I don’t know why you were hoping for those. They wouldn’t divide evenly among five of us either way. May as well have a regular loaf.”

“I like the bread from my district,” he replies coolly.

Johanna huffs. “I guess if we get some, whoever’s still alive at breakfast could take a vote on who gets to eat the rest.”

I stifle a laugh. I don’t know why that seems funny. But Johanna gives me an appraising, almost approving look, so maybe I’m staying on what passes for her good side.

Finnick distributes neat slices of the fish he caught earlier, so we finally have dinner, without the bread everyone is apparently hankering for.

And still no anthem. It’s going to be midnight soon. Did something happen that we missed it? Did the candy do something to us, make us lose track of time? But I know we were on the move again before it was full dark. What if I’m somehow the only one who didn’t see it?

This is ridiculous. I’m probably in the best shape of all of us — Beetee and Finnick have knife wounds, Peeta is still not a hundred percent after hitting the force field, and Johanna’s only had about an hour of sleep since the Games started. All I can complain about is my still-healing skin and a terrifying afternoon. And nobody else seems tempted to say, _hey, remind me who was in the anthem earlier, because I seem not to have watched it_.

Peeta and I volunteer for the first watch, and the others drop off immediately. But Finnick sleeps restlessly, murmuring Annie’s name from time to time, so we sit in silence for awhile, giving them time to get deep into sleep. We sit shoulder to shoulder, with him watching the jungle and me watching the water. Better that way, for me — I half expect to start hearing my sister’s voice among the insects clicking off to my left.

“So, are we down to … eight, now?” Peeta says quietly.

Relief floods through my spine. It wasn’t just me. “I think so,” I reply.

He lists today’s deaths under his breath. Mags, the morphling woman who saved his life, Blight, Wiress, Cashmere, Gloss. Whoever died in the wave this morning. Whoever was picked out of the trees in pieces. Without the anthem, we have no way of knowing who they were.

It occurs to me to wonder whether this conversation is going to make us look like a bad bet onscreen, like we’re getting easily confused, but on the whole we should probably show that we’re aware of what’s going on and making plans to handle it. So we go over the questions — whether they would speed up nightfall in the arena but keep the anthem timed for the Capitol, whether we really could have missed it, what they could have done to us to make us miss it, whether it matters. Whether the others will devise a strategy based on who’s left alive that they won’t share with us, even though we supposedly still are working together.

I’m not really sure I can keep up this level of paranoia. And that’s just to do with the anthem.

“What the hell was going on with the bread discussion? If that’s code for something, I have no idea what.” Peeta sounds so frustrated, even in a murmur. I wonder if he’d be half as frustrated if it weren’t to do with bread.

“I’m a little more worried about the peppermints,” I tell him. I spell out what I was thinking, about how this might not have been a message from Haymitch but a message among Careers.

“It’s bad either way,” he mutters, thinking. Then he shifts around uncomfortably and scratches the back of his neck. I wait, wondering what’s that hard for him to bring up.

“Did it look to you like that parachute came down kind of funny? I, uh, it looked different from how it usually does onscreen. I haven’t seen that many arrive in person.”

I look away, guilt leftover from last year creeping around in my stomach. “I guess you were asleep when the last one arrived,” I say, trying to cover. But then I think about it. I’ve generally received parachutes in forests. And even there … “Yeah, they’re usually better aimed. They at least land near the person.”

“And it came down really fast, too.” He sounds relieved that he has an idea of normal parachute flight. “Could something have been wrong with it?”

“No idea.”

“I just … could all these things be linked?”

It doesn’t make it any better to hear him say it. Maybe worse. I feel sick with fear. All I can do is nod.

He sighs. “Look. Katniss. There’s no use pretending we don’t each know what the other one’s up to. And maybe you made a deal with Haymitch, but he made me promises too.”

I stare at him, thinking crazily of peppermints for a moment, and then I realize.

“So when it comes down to it —” Peeta starts.

I grab at him, desperate to shut him up. “We stick together.” Does he not see what treacherous ground we’re on?

He takes hold of my fingers gently. “Katniss. Always. But in the end —”

“No. Listen to me. We’re not there yet.” I can’t say it. Not when I don’t know who’s listening.

I’m nose to nose with him, and even in the dark I see his eyes track slightly to the side, toward our sleeping supposed allies. “That’s true,” he says slowly. Cautiously. “But we don’t know how soon we’ll get there.”

“If anything is different,” I say, hoping I can be anywhere near as subtle as he is without giving the wrong idea, “if anything else changes.”

I don’t think he understands me. Because he says, “My end game isn’t going to change, Katniss.”

My heart is beating so hard I’m practically shaking. What makes him think mine will? And what makes him think now’s the time to talk about this, anyway? I mouth, “We stick together. Just us. If anything else is different. You hear me?”

He shakes his head a little, licks his lips as if to keep arguing about which of us will be the last to die when we have an awful lot more immediate and ominous concerns, and I can’t let him go off track like that, so I press my lips to his. And when he tries to pull away, I grip his shirt all the harder. Terrified that he will disappear from my hold.

Something changes; he’s kissing me back, and it’s like — like a meal that only makes me hungrier, and my whole body is frantic. And now when he leans back, he pulls me with him down onto the sand and he never lets me go.

A rip through the sky jerks us apart. Panting, I look up to see that the lightning tree has been struck and that whole wedge of the arena is crackling with light.

Finnick’s silhouette sits up. He looks around and faces us where we’re tangled on the sand. I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Way to keep watch, you two. How about I take over.”

Peeta decides to keep watch for awhile longer but leads me over to a woven mat. As we pass by, Finnick says, “That lightning is something. I think we’ve got a good plan for tomorrow.”

We agree pleasantly. But as Peeta crouches down next to me to kiss me goodnight, he whispers, “I hear you. We’ll stick together.”

I’m only half reassured. As I try to keep my eyes closed, my heart is still pounding, from all kinds of things.

↔

I wake up with my teeth clenched, rested but not relaxed. The sun is still low at the lip of the arena and no one else seems on edge. Peeta is slouched on the sand with his back against a tree. Johanna keeping watch. Finnick trying to get a sip of water into Beetee, then giving up and wading into the water to fish.

Peeta is soaking wet, I realize, when I look at him again after taking a trip behind the trees. He smiles at me and we exchange a good morning kiss. He hands me a slice of fish. I distract myself from the feel of it in my mouth by wondering why he tried to go for a swim. He didn’t wait to dry off before sprawling in the sand — grains are stuck all over his legs.

And on his forearms, and on the back of his head, I see when he turns away briefly. Dark patches of wet sand breaking up his pale skin, and his hair darkened with water. To help make him harder to see in the jungle.

He’s ready to go.

He hands me another slice of fish, and I eat it gladly — we might not get much salt for awhile.

I tap a tree while Finnick’s fishing. I fill all the baskets and shells. A sign of good faith. I don’t see how we can take any water with us, so I just drink all I want and strap the spile back onto my belt. Finnick comes back with more fish and a haul of shellfish and passes them around.

It’s close enough to ten o’clock to talk about our next location without arousing suspicions. I plop down on the sand next to Peeta. “So, where’s next? The tree, or just get away from the wave?”

Finnick shrugs. “Beetee said he wanted to think some stuff over before we do that.”

“Really?” Peeta looks at Beetee, who you can barely see breathing.

“Yeah, sorry, that was before you woke up.”

“What stuff?”

Beetee surprises us all by clearing his throat. “Complicated,” he rasps. “Don’t want to waste it if it won’t work.”

Peeta, who can make anything sound guileless, says, “Oh man, I thought you were asleep. Waste what? The wire doesn’t burn up, right?”

But Beetee seems to have drifted back off. Finnick shrugs. I turn to check Johanna’s approach to all this, and she sees me looking and scowls. “What? I want to electrocute them too. So if he needs to work out the bugs, we can wait. We’re okay here.”

We don’t even need to look at each other to know. Peeta just shrugs, “Fair enough.” I nod, as if I’m agreeing, and get to my feet to stand in the shade of the trees and dump some sand out of my quiver. And they all seem to take our reaction at face value.

After a minute, Peeta fidgets a bit, then says to nobody, “Be right back,” and steps into the trees. Johanna glances after him, then back down at the shellfish she’s struggling to open. I make sure the spile is secure in my belt. Still holding half my arrows in my hand, I fade silently into the jungle.

Peeta is waiting for me fifty yards away. I wave him on and pick up the pace.

It doesn’t take long. I hear Finnick say something that sounds friendly, like, “Now what are you two up to?” — but Johanna hardly waits for a response before she shouts, “Get back here! _Hey!_ ”

The beach is already out of sight over my shoulder. No axe or trident comes flying toward me. Ahead, I hear Peeta running. I keep an arrow nocked as I sprint to catch up with him. There’s some crashing in the vegetation back toward the beach, some furious-sounding yelling, but it fades. We race on, uphill and angling right, ahead through the hours.


End file.
